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Assume everything you say is true, it seems to me there are two outcomes possible:(1) Donation accepted:criminal has less moneyOpenBSD safe for another year (or whatever)(2) Donation refused:criminal has more money to perpetuate further crimesOpenBSD remains in danger of shutting down

In what universe is (2) a better outcome?

Now if Popescu is attempting to buy considerations that might change things, but being a criminal doesn't automatically mean you can't be an honest philanthropist, just look at Bill Gates. (Okay, so maybe not the worlds best possible example of honest philanthropy, but still)

Mircea Popescu is very nice person, thank you for saving OpenBSD.
Now, why are some a-holes here bouthmouthing one person that did something to help OpenBSD's problem?!
And jumping to conclusions and all. Jesus Christ that will teach any future milionares to sponsor FOSS.

Here, here.
Where was Tim Cook? Where was Steve Wozniak? WHere was the Oracle douche Ellison?
Missing.
What was here for the Open Source Movement? An mysterious Bitcoin Billionaire who likes young women nude in public.

Your sentiment is quite correct. I should have made it more explicit that I know nothing of Popescu except that he has made this generous donation to a worthy project, and my assumption was purely for the sake of argument.

That said I should also say I know absolutely nothing about his "niceness" either, the quality appears to have no particular correlation with either generosity or alleged criminal behavior.

Who said anything about lower? Do you disagree with either of the following statements?* Bill Gates, as CEO of Microsoft, is guilty of repeatedly engaging in criminal monopolistic behavior.* Bill Gates, as a philanthropist, has a reputation for engaging in a lot of "philanthropy" that seems to have more to do with expanding the power of his philanthropic empire than actually helping people. (Note that I am NOT denying that he also does a lot of good)

Was he not he at the helm of a company repeatedly convicted for engaging in criminal monopolistic practices under his guidance? That he was a criminal is difficult to deny, regardless of the personal immunity afforded him by the corporate veil.

As to your last point: there do seem to be a significant number of scammers floating about, so I can easily understand the "assume everyone's a scammer" attitude, I imagine it works well in a majority of cases. However Mircea Popescu is both well known and well respected in the bitcoin community and beyond, so this'd be one case of the minority.

do you have any real proof to your assertions other than you unfounded opinions. it is trivial to slander anyone posting as AC. Do you have links to arrests, investigations, complaints to law enforcement or any such?

The point is that OpenBSD (along with the myriad softwares packaged with it and available through ports) is useful enough on its own. Not everyone's idea of useless is "doesn't play World of Warcraft."

Yeah, platform independence was nice in the early 90s when there were something like 5 RISC platforms competing for dominance, and both Unix and NT were vying for control of all platforms - x86 and RISC. Today, all the RISC platforms are fringe platforms as far as general computing goes (ARM tablets or phones or PPC consoles or MIPS routers not included here), and so it makes sense to develop the most optimal solutions for those, and then freeze it at that.

There's plenty of ARM and MIPS machines out there, yes, but today generally in the embedded space (although this may change), and the remaining architectures are statistical noise. IA64 is dead, SuperH is dead, Power is irrelevant for OpenBSD's use cases, Sparc is nearly irrelevant period outside of Oracle servers.

The picture changes when you consider older machines like Sparcstations, PPC Macs, etc., that aren't supported by their mfrs anymore, yes, but there's a world of difference, performance and utili

One wonders if simply compiling and running on a SimH [trailing-edge.com] virtual machine might be a better use of electricity, especially considering that even an Atom-powered server is going to be much faster than a real VAX.

It's purely poor management. From what I understand, the build servers are absolutely archaic beasts that had they been replaced long ago would not have led to such astronomically high bills. It also doesn't help that they seem to be located in Theo de Raadt's basement.

From what I understand, the build servers are absolutely archaic beasts that had they been replaced long ago would not have led to such astronomically high bills./p>

There are a variety of of build serves. There are ones for SPARC (and SPARC64), MacPPC, SGI/MIPS, VAX, etc.:

http://openbsd.org/plat.html

One of the reasons why this is done is help expose bugs. Some issues are only exposed on non-mainstream architectures, and if everyone only uses certain CPUs, then they won't be found (as easily). Back in the early 1990s, not many people used DEC Alpha, but by supporting it (both in the BSD and Linux world), it kept kernel developers "honest" when it came to supporting thin

not poor management at all, the varying architectures with their alignment issues expose bugs, many of them. Did you know projects like Linux have huge alignment bugs that cause major security holes that crop up again and again because they mainly build and test only on x86-32 and x86-64? If you follow the CVE you'd know this.

The power requirements are not astronomical at all, those of us in the business of caring for racked servers in HVAC controlled areas know this.

I made no comment about the varying architectures, I made a comment about the build servers themselves.

2.5 racks of ancient equipment is too much equipment. Modernizing those servers would cut the physical and electrical load down by at least 80%. Moving it to a more effective location would go even further. There are some places in the states that rent out a full 42u rack with a 20 amp supply and an unmetered gigabit link for around $700 a month. Colocation in Canada is more expensive across the board but

I am not arguing about how the implementation of the development should proceed. If they truly need specific older models of hardware to do on point engineering of the OS kernel that demonstrates superior debug outcomes, fine.

BUT PLAN THE BUDGET TO DO SO.

Don't hold everyone on all architectures hostage because a 1989 Vax system chews up 90% of the electrical bill.

There are good points above, but the points raised by people making the suggestions are also valid.

It's true that there are diverse developers developing this on now dead machines. But that's one of the things contributing to the excessive power consumption in Theo's basement. If his devs have it in theirs, it's one thing, but for what he has, he should consider the options:

- Try get hold of modern equivalents to some of the machines. Like instead of Power MACs, get hold of some IBM P series boxes -

You can't correct a lack of donations without some sort of crisis. Typically, that crisis is advertising a lack of funding.Years ago they identified the same problem and worked to fix it. Obviously it was not permanent.So no, in your sense, management is not the problem.But management refuses to use donated rack space and insists on testing on real hardware for obscure platforms.Some say that's poor management, some say it is needed.Still others say if it were needed it would be funded, yet more others say

I am very glad to see these projects funded. I like a diverse ecosystem of operating systems and ideas as opposed to a homogeneous realm of only one flavor of GNU/Linux or BSD. The more things being tried, the better. Despite the bitterness expressed here with the OpenBSD team and the way they run things, I admire their dedication. They produce some lovely stuff like OpenSSH. I am not a fan of Godaddy, but was pleased even they sent a cheque for development of OpenSSH. It is a worthwhile goal. The more oper

Yup, if you look at the 3 big exchanges that deal with USD, you'll see $1.4 BILLION USD changing hands in the last month for bitcoins. It isn't rare to see a couple million $$$ change hands in small handful of trades.

Admittedly I'm not dealing with sums anywhere near this magnitude, but so far I was able to withdraw every single cent of my proceeds from VirWoX (for a total of something approaching $1.5k over the last couple months). I'm using it because it was the easiest to set up, as they withdraw directly to your PayPal account, so all you need is to have one.

It matters to those of us who use bitcoin regularly. Also, the plural of bitcoin should be bitcoin not bitcoins. Whole units have no significance when handling bitcoin since there are no physical bits and you rarely hold or exchange even whole units.

I don't know about instantly getting it into the bank account, but I can instantly have it in my PayPal account. From there to the bank then takes the usual 2 days, but I can spend it immediately in places which accept PayPal, which is quite a lot of them.

Racist. Not all Romanians are gypsies, and "gypsy" is a term with negative connotations anyway. I don't think they even self-iedntify as Romanian. Way to post anonymously, coward. And I wouldn't worry about OpenBSD being tainted by bitcoins. Bitcoins are fine, and OpenBSD is better alive than dead, no?

Really? How do you know his nationality? The Roma minority is 3.3 % in Romania. He would have better changes of being hungarian..

an interesting blank box...the summary says "romanian bitcoin billionaire". so is he romainian by nationality, that is, he was born in the state of Romania, or is he romanian by heritage (i.e. gypsy) meaning that regardless of where he was born, his parents are of romanian heritage.

Romania is a country whose inhabitants are called, in English, Romanians. The name of the country (and therefore the people) comes from Rome. The Roman Empire. THAT Rome. Romanian--like French, Spanish, and Italian--is a romance language descended directly from Latin. Some even argue that it's the Romance language that today most closely resembles Latin!

Roma, on the other hand, is a name for a minority population of people that most probably emigrated from South Asia over a thousand years ago. AKA gypsies. The word Roma comes from some Roma dialect and has no connection to Romania or Roman other than as homonyms. Good example of a false congate--they sound alike, but there is no connection.

Admittedly, the conflation is a common mistake to make, especially since there is a very large (comparatively speaking) Roma population in Romania.

Romanian--like French, Spanish, and Italian--is a romance language descended directly from Latin. Some even argue that it's the Romance language that today most closely resembles Latin!

I'd say it's the language that most closely resembles Italian. You can really confuse them, at least with your eyes closed. Of course, if you open your eyes again, you will easily spot the Italian: It's the one constantly using his/her hands to make gestures. Italian is probably the only language that doesn't leave out deaf people. You can essentially *see* everything that's being said. And of course, even if your hearing is somewhat impaired, you can also still hear it. At the other end of town.

The article under the link makes a good point. So do you. Truth is, I am betting hard that next summer, when I will celebrate 20 years without interruption on the server side of the IT business ( programming & design ), I have never, never ever seen a production system relying / running on any BSD. Theo de Raadt was saved by the bell. This time.

That's a well-known troll site, which should be obvious even to the uninitiated after reading 20 lines in. So either you're gullible or you are perpetuating that guy's troll intentionally. Neither option looks good for you, sorry.